Engagement Isn't Always The Coolest Person At The Party
Many leading Instructional Design experts tell us we need to engage with our learners, grab their attention, for the most effective learning transfer. John Keller (2016), built his model of motivational design where 'Attention' sits at the apex. Likewise, Gagne's 9 Events of instruction (1965, cited in UF, 2016), rightly places "Gain attention" as the first thing you need to do when preparing for learning.
How Do We Do This?
We’ve all come across that cool person at a party who is amazingly well dressed, full of interesting experiences, and more than happy to share them. Sharing often involves standing around and listening to them talk all about their amazing experiences. But the conversation is very one way, and it gets boring pretty quickly, as you can’t really connect with someone who is just talking about themselves.
One of the great things about custom content is its flexibility to be designed for engagement. But, like the coolest person at the party, it is often a good-looking, polished interface that’s disguising a medium for content delivery. It might be a good-looking store of really amazing information, but that doesn’t make it engaging, and certainly isn’t the best approach to designing learning.
1. Start By Questioning
Generally, in order to feel engaged, we need to involve the audience in the conversation. We can do this by using effective questioning in order to extract from within about what they already know (Herbert, 2014). Ok, so let’s consider this, which approach would you find more engaging? Being told, "Approximately 23% of the global population uses Facebook", or being asked "What percentage of the global population do you think use Facebook?" A. 12%, B. 23%, C. 46%, D. 52% (Statista, 2016).
Client feedback tells me, engaging through deliberately constructed questioning, is more stimulating, which isn’t any new discovery though. Ausubel (as cited in ECU, 2014), identified this approach in 1960, and his advance organisers prepare learners thinking to align with the next new concept, and linking statements stimulate recall of previous learning. Questioning is one of the most effective ways of achieving this, often by using a single or multi-answer question approach, scenarios, and similar. The important thing is that your audience is engaged with the activity, not just told "stuff". Further, opportunities for practice (Boud & Posser as cited in AUCT, 2003; Keller, 2016) provide opportunities for the learner to cement their knowledge, and allow for the provision of timely, made-to-measure feedback.
2. Create Opportunities For Practice
The trick here is to recognise opportunities to create these experiences, these simulated synchronous conversations, anytime you find yourself writing a definition, explaining a fact, listing a group or series of points, explaining the difference between two concepts, or you turn the words into a question or scenario. The reality is that this takes more time and effort, but at the end of the day, your audience doesn’t want an average course; they want an extraordinary learning experience. And, you can engage learners on every level of Bloom’s taxonomy, using an appropriately aligned tool that may be a question, a scenario or any other activity (Frangenhiem, 2013, July 17a; 2013, July 17b).
So, go forth and conquer, and be that extraordinary designer. Be the one who creates those most extraordinary experiences for your audience, within which to immerse themselves, and learn.
References
1. AUCT. (2003). High quality learning. Retrieved February 18th, 2003 from http://www.learningdesigns.uow.edu.au/project/hi_qlt_learn.html
2. East Carolina University, College of Education. (ECU). (2014). Organisers: Advance organisers, graphic organisers. Retrieved February 26th, 2017 from https://www.ecu.edu/cs-educ/TQP/upload/ISLES-S-Organizers-Declarative-Aug2014.pdf
3. Frangenheim, E. (2013, July 17). Classroom Thinking Strategies with Eric Frangenheim - University Lecture Video 1 [Video]. Retrieved August 26, 2014 from mms://winmedia.usq.edu.au/edu/SOCA/Thinking1.wmv
4. Frangenheim, E. (2013, July 17a). Classroom Thinking Strategies with Eric Frangenheim - University Lecture Video 2 [Video]. Retrieved August 26, 2014 from mms://winmedia.usq.edu.au/edu/SOCA/Thinking2.wmv
5. Frangenheim, E. (2013, July 17b). Classroom Thinking Strategies with Eric Frangenheim - University Lecture Video 3 [Video]. Retrieved August 26, 2014 from mms://winmedia.usq.edu.au/edu/SOCA/Thinking3.wmv
6. Herbert, P. (2014). Quality questioning techniques [Video]. Quality questioning workshop; part 1. Retrieved September 25, 2014 from http://vimeo.com/user10756933/review/105727826/640bdff2b5
7. Keller, John (Jun 28, 2016). ARCS model. Retrieved 26th February, 2017 from http://www.arcsmodel.com/
8. Statista. (2016). Statistics and facts about social media usage. Retrieved 26th February, 2017 https://www.statista.com/topics/1164/social-networks/
9. University of Florida; Centre for Instructional Technology & Training. (UF). (Nov 6, 2016). Gagne’s 9 events of instruction. Retrieved 26th February, 2017 from http://citt.ufl.edu/tools/gagnes-9-events-of-instruction/